1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of managing and using sensing data generated from plural sensors connected to a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, sensor network technologies for acquiring a large amount of sensing data from plural tiny wireless sensor nodes through a network have been developed. Sensor networks are different from the current Internet in that current services provided via Internet are restricted to virtual spaces, while sensor networks are fused with real spaces. Since sensor networks are fused with real spaces, they can provide various services depending on timing and locations. In other words, real world information is acquired as a large amount of sensor data, and transmitted via networks, and utilized for applications such as disaster monitoring, equipment monitoring, and security from a remote place. Further, a general-purposed sensing infrastructure can be applied to various applications. In JP-A-2005-122491, a technology is disclosed in which sensing environment and application environment are separately managed and the sensing environment is shared by plural applications.
In information search systems according to the related art, static electronic information to be searched for is input to and accumulated in a database on a network. Users can acquire desired information from a directory containing accumulated data information by changing of view or sorting, or search based on a keyword or an attribute.
However, in comparing with the case above, when considering a system for acquiring successive and time series sensing data by placing physical electronic devices within a real space (e.g., a sensor network), units and procedures for generally and flexibly matching physical electronic information generating sources (e.g., tiny sensor nodes) with sensing information to be presented to users are required. For this reason, it is difficult to apply information search systems as they are according to the related art.
For example, in JP-A-2005-122491, there is disclosed a technology of matching sensing environment to a specific application in advance for routing sensing data to pre-assigned applications. However, it is not disclosed how to easily present a large amount of sensing data, which is one of the features of the sensor networks, to users.